


keep your heart close to the ground

by wastrelwoods



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Codependency, Episode: e016-17 Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, Missing Scene(s), Other, Torture, canon-typical violence and discussion of death and suicidality and, i promise there's things in here that are not heartbreaking and dark, like. cuddles? and pining?, which is. canon but that doesn't actually make me feel better about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 07:18:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12501900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: Peter folds his legs into a criss-cross and rests his head on the wall behind him. Ancient Martian hieroglyphs glow above the unkempt tuft of his dark hair. "Alright, then," he digresses. "We can make a compromise. Let me worry about you, and I will allow you the same. We take care of each other."





	keep your heart close to the ground

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'soldier on' by the temper trap
> 
> also, thanks to c / crowry for some beta work consisting of me throwing drafts at their head and begging for more angsty concepts to unpack

Juno can feel his pulse pounding in his temples.

_Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

He curls in on himself and rests his head between his knees, feeling a little pathetic but too tired to care. There's dried blood crusted under his eye, quick twinges of pain reverberating inside his skull, and on top of that his whole body aches with exhaustion. 

It's been...a long day. Days? 

There's a cheap lamp hanging from the ceiling of the makeshift holding cell, casting a sickly blue light over the walls, throwing those nightmare carvings into sharp relief. Juno ignores them as best he can, keeps his eyes screwed shut. 

_Thief, turn over a card_. Two kings. _Turn over a card_. Green square. _Another_. A goat. Another. Seven of clubs. Ace of spades. Yellow triangle. Again and again and again. He can't break his thoughts out of Miasma's rhythm.

Somewhere behind his right eye, a short burst of pain, sharp enough to make him wince aloud. 

The door creaks open. Juno glances up. 

It's not who he expected to see. 

"Hello, Detective," Peter Nureyev sighs. The silent guards push him into the cell, too, ignore the way he staggers and sways on his feet, lock the door behind him. The light overhead flickers. 

"Guess we're supposed to share," Juno grunts, gesturing to the bedroll he's been sitting on since Miasma's lackeys brought him in ten minutes ago. Peter offers him a thin, tired smile.

He's bad off, Juno can tell. Tries to seat himself gracefully next to Juno and all but collapses, long legs folding under him like a newborn foal. Breathes in and out, slowly, and shakes his head like he's trying to clear it. "I've seen better room service, I have to say."

Juno's gaze roams over every inch of him, trying to assess the worst of the damage, but it's hard to spot. Peter's the image of cool composure, shifting his posture into a casual sprawl, taking in the carvings on the walls with mild interest. His hand is shaking where it rests on the mattress beside him. 

Juno wants to ask, because he's not sure what happened all the times he said "I don't know" or begged for a moment's rest. He just heard the screams. 

His jaw clenches tight, and he tears his gaze away from Nureyev, who's still looking at the walls. It would be easier, probably, to ignore the roiling guilt in his stomach if Peter wasn't in this cell with him. But. Still. It's good to see him...alive. Able to pretend everything's fine, at least. 

Peter inhales sharply, after a moment, and Juno looks back at him, puzzled, sees him staring with his brows drawn together in concern. "What?" _What's wrong_ would be a stupid question, under the circumstances. 

"You have..." he lifts his hand to Juno's face, drops it when he notices the tremor in his fingers, "Under your eye." 

He'd forgotten about that, nearly. "Yeah." 

"Does that...always happen, when you...read minds?"

Juno blinks. Laughs without any real mirth behind it. "Seems that way," he agrees. 

Peter raises an eyebrow. "I see. This is a new development?"

He shrugs. Light flickers again, and his head pounds. "I mean, months ago, after I swallowed that pill from Saffron, I..." Hard to put that experience into words, actually, now he thinks about it. "But then it was gone. Or I thought it was."

It doesn't take more than a second for Nureyev to connect the dots from there. He can see it in his face. Then, a flash of something else. That bright, burning curiosity that lights up his eyes when he sees something he wants. "What does it feel like?" 

"Like a goddamn laser to the skull," Juno snaps, and then regrets it when he sees the concern flood back into Nureyev's face. "Don't--it's fine. I've had worse." 

"Yes, but you shouldn't have to--"

"And what about you?" He retorts, feeling sore and trapped and afraid. "I should just let Miasma take it out on you, because I can't handle a little pain?" Peter flinches, and tries to be subtle about adjusting his collar, but it just draws Juno's attention to the angry red burn marks on the back of his neck. His stomach does flips, and he groans, pushing off the wall onto his feet. 

Every step he takes reverberates through his head like a pebble dropped down a well, makes his brain throb and his throat seize up, but he has to move. It takes a few seconds to internalize the fact that there's nowhere to go but the other side of the holding cell, a few feet away. He keeps pacing. 

Peter watches him, that same guarded look on his face he'd worn...yesterday? The day before that? At the resort, telling Juno he trusted him with his life, knowing Juno wasn't built for trust, couldn't reciprocate even if he wanted to. 

Would he make the same choice now? Strapped in alongside Juno, watching him drive the pair of them over a cliff? Getting punished every time he slips up or isn't good enough?

Does it even matter, when he's just as trapped as Juno is? 

"If we are going to make good our escape," he says, his voice steady, "I need you to conserve your energy, Juno. Rest, when you can. I can handle myself." 

It would probably be comforting, if his screams weren't still fresh in Juno's ears. "Bullshit," he says. 

Sighing, Peter folds his legs into a criss-cross and rests his head on the wall behind him. Ancient Martian hieroglyphs glow above the unkempt tuft of his dark hair. "Alright, then," he digresses. "We can make a compromise. Let me worry about you, and I will allow you the same. We take care of each other." 

Juno watches his fingers tremble, and squares his jaw. "That's the worst plan I've ever heard," he argues, because he still can't stomach the thought of Nureyev putting his life in Juno's hands. He's got a disappointing track record in that area. 

Raising one eyebrow, Peter gestures to the space beside him. "If you have a better idea, Detective, I'd love to hear it." 

Damn him, he's not wrong. They're in a tomb several miles under the surface of an empty desert. There aren't a lot of options open to them. Juno sighs and sits back down. Peter's eyes meet his, soft and full of light, and he smiles. "Rest," he repeats. 

Juno reaches out and puts his hand over Nureyev's shaking one, curls their fingers together until the erratic motion stills. He shuts his eyes, and focuses on the steady pulse of pain in his head. _Thump. Thump-thump._

*

Later, the restless quiet turns to uneasy sleep. There’s not much room on the bedroll, but they’re too exhausted to do anything but make the most of it.

Juno thinks he might stir half-awake and find his body turned into Nureyev’s chest, seeking his warmth and the fading scent of his cologne. Or maybe he only dreams it, the way he shifts closer to Juno in his sleep and throws a leg over his hip and an arm across his waist. It’s the kind of impossible thing he’d waste time dreaming about, anyway. 

And dream or no, it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t last. Morning doesn’t come any slower no matter how hard he tries to will it away. 

*

What makes it a little easier is to think of it like running. Not chasing, not pursuit of a specific goal, where you come out the other side of it with a sense of achievement. Just unglamorous, tedious, punishing laps around the track, pushing himself as far as he can go for as long as he can manage it and ignoring all the pain that’s going to pile up on his body when he finally stops to rest. 

There’s a trick he always used to use, back when he bothered trying to corral his shitty lungs into some kind of shape. Trick his brain into thinking the end was just around the next corner. Keep his eye on that corner, every time, thinking, just one more and then I can rest. Then, soon as he rounds that corner, rinse and repeat. 

Ignore the twisting ache under his ribs and the unwilling shuffle of his feet. Just one more corner to turn, and he’s done. 

“Turn over another card,” Miasma hisses. She never deviates from that script, not unless one of them causes her trouble. A real one-track mind, she’s got. But the thing is, while Juno’s still cognizant enough to think through the pain, he can fool himself into thinking every card is the first one. Or the last. It’s just one card. He can read one goddamn card. 

It works pretty well, too, at least in the moment. Nureyev keeps flipping cards for hours, uninterrupted by a single shock. Juno keeps his jaw set, and his eyes closed, and rattles off all the images that he sees as fast as he can, even when his head starts to pound and his voice gets hoarse. Just one more card, and then he can rest. Just one more. Just--

There’s a long pause, while Juno waits in anticipation of the words he’s heard a hundred times now. Miasma purses her lips, narrows her eyes at the screen in front of her, and turns to look down her nose at the closest assistant. “We’re done here,” she says coolly. “I need to reprogram the scanners. Take the Detective back to his cell.” 

And then his brain lurches, and the last few hours catch up with him all at once. Juno trips over his feet as they lead him out of the lab and into the hallway, and by the time they reach the second level the assistants are half-dragging him over the stones. 

Juno’s face feels numb, Juno’s feet won’t cooperate, there’s a coppery tang in his mouth and he can’t lift his head. When they lead him into the holding cell he folds and lies down on the floor and can’t make himself move until he feels the gentle pressure of hands on his face. 

“--no, can you move? Are you hurt? What did--”

Groaning, he shifts by degrees until he’s lying on his back, then coughs as his throat abruptly closes over. Arms wrap around him and help him to sit up, half-leaning against another body. He can’t quite remember how to open his eyes at the moment, decides to leave it be. 

“Juno, you idiot,” Peter says softly, his tone laced tight with worry. “I’d kill you myself if I didn’t think you could manage it perfectly well on your own.” 

Juno grins, his forehead resting against Peter’s shoulder, and manages a dry laugh. It makes his head throb. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he croaks. 

The pads of his fingers are delicate where they brush over his cheeks, soft and uncertain, and then he makes a quiet sound of displeasure. Through blurring vision Juno can see his lips pursed, before he shifts Juno’s still mostly limp weight and begins to tear a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. It makes a noise like an earthquake in Juno’s oversensitized, empty skull, and he winces. “Tilt your head down,” Peter murmurs, and presses the wad of cloth to Juno’s nose. When he flinches away, Peter sighs and explains. “Your nose is bleeding, Detective.”

He’s too close. They’re too close together, wrapped around each other so Juno can’t tell where he ends and Peter Nureyev begins. But honestly, he can’t summon up the energy to pull away, just pinches the crooked bridge of his nose and closes his eyes while Peter brushes his hair to one side. 

Behind them, the door opens and shuts again, and when Juno glances over he sees two nutrient bars on a plastic tray, and one water bottle. “Guess Miasma’s in it for the long haul,” he grunts. Peter’s fingers are still carding through his hair, and isn’t it always touch with him? Always moving into Juno’s space faster than he can move away. Settling his hands on Juno’s arm or his shoulder or his hip while he’s still trying to brace for the punch, holding him close like it’s nothing. 

It probably is nothing, to him. The way Peter feels like the most solid thing in the universe, holding Juno up, pressed all along his side with his warm breath ghosting against Juno’s ear. All this...whatever that he feels every time he gets caught up in Peter’s orbit? Given past experience, chances are it’s all in Juno’s head. 

Lot of things are in Juno’s head, these days. 

He closes his eyes, gives in to the incessant pounding behind his temples and leans into it. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…. 

Well. Juno’s never exactly been a fast learner. 

*

“Thief, turn over a card.” 

Miasma’s small, liver-spotted hands fly over her switches and controls, and Juno closes his eyes and reaches-- and opens them again, confused. 

“Thief…” Miasma says again, her voice a low purr of deadly menace. 

“Just a minute.” His voice sounds tinny over the intercom, but there’s a stubborn note in his tone that turns Juno’s stomach with apprehension. “Juno deserves a short break, I think.” 

Miasma goes rigid, her unnatural features twisting in anger. “Oh, you think, do you?” she hisses. Juno bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, twisting and pulling at his restraints to no avail as she flips the switch again. 

Peter manages to hold back the screams for a second, and then two, but when they do come the sound is harsh and agonized and accompanied by a wave of fear that nearly pulls Juno in alongside him. Strange hisses and clicks and electrical whirrings sound from the distant chamber, but Juno can barely register those. The noise makes his blood turn to ice in his veins. 

“Stop,” he pleads, and jerks his head hard enough to jostle the electrodes pasted all across his skull. Miasma doesn’t even glance his way. “I said _stop_ , goddamnit, you’re killing him!”

“No, Juno Steel,” she says coolly, and twists a dial that makes Peter’s screams echo even louder. “I’m afraid you are.” 

*

Hot red sand sucks at his feet with every step. His legs are heavy and aching and unsteady underneath him, but he pushes forward. Just one more step, he thinks, over and over again, and then I can rest. 

Sun’s just setting behind him, a cold red light near the horizon. Cliffs on either side, the edge of a crater ahead of him, an endless sea of stars above him that he couldn’t name or chart if he had a gun to his head. Not lost, though. Looking for something. 

Goddamn if it doesn’t feel like he’s been wandering like this forever. Not accomplishing much of anything except getting grit in his face. One foot in front of the other.

Not something, he remembers, suddenly. Someone. 

There’s a name he should be calling out right now, shouting until his voice gives out or he finally gets an answer. There’s a name that’s not his secret to tell. A secret he doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand, because there are some mysteries you feel better never having solved. 

The desert’s gonna swallow him up, sooner than later, and then it won’t matter what he does or doesn’t know, whether he finds what he’s searching for. 

He keeps walking anyway, slides and half-falls down a sand dune and picks himself up and takes another step, and then another. 

Call it hubris, or just plain stupidity, but Juno’s never known when to give up. 

As he reaches the crest of the next hill, he can make out a small, dark shape in the distance. There’s a name he should call out. He breaks into a run. The sand sucks at the soles of his boots, drags him down, but he keeps his footing. 

He’s lying prone, half-buried in the sand. Juno stands over him longer than he should, afraid to reach out and touch.

When he finally does, his hand comes away shining, sticky, bloody. 

Behind him, the last of the sun’s light fades. 

Juno falls to his knees, tugging and twisting and heaving until the body is lying on its back, vacant eyes staring sightlessly up at the dark sky. Juno’s seen dead men before. He hasn’t exactly gotten used to it, but this is different. This hits him like a punch to the gut. This is Peter Nureyev, motionless, empty, all the warmth in him leached away to the void of space. 

He tries to speak, but the only thing that leaves his mouth is an involuntary jagged noise of grief. A low, hopeless cry that only he is around to hear. 

The sim-wind picks up, blowing sand through his hair and stinging his skin, He can taste the dust on his tongue, feel it coarse and dry in his throat. He reaches out again, not sure what there is left to reach for, and feels cold hands shackle around his wrists, holding him down, and Peter’s screams are echoing in his ears, and his head feels like it’s going to crack in two-- 

“Juno,” Peter says, sharply, and he throws out an arm on reflex, rolling to the side and finding the cold stone floor of the tomb underneath him. There’s a dull thud as his hand meets something solid, and a sharp pain shoots through his wrist. 

It’s sudden, but it’s grounding. Gives him an extra second to take in his surroundings, wince in the lamplight, try to slow the frantic pounding of his heart. He swears as colorfully as he can manage, wringing out his hand and struggling to sit up. 

Peter’s weight shifts away from his side, allowing him to move freely. “You were dreaming, Juno,” he says softly, like he’s trying to talk down a spooked animal. Juno resists the impulse to flinch away, to run, to hit something again till the bones in his hands splinter apart. He grits his teeth.

“Warn a lady next time,” he spits. “Jesus, Nureyev, I thought you were--” 

He’s not sure how he planned on finishing that thought, but he runs out of breath before he can manage it anyway. His head hasn’t stopped pounding in the week they’ve been down here in the endless dark, but all around him the world is still fuzzy and half-real. Like falling from one nightmare into another. 

His bruised hand is caught between Peter’s own, and Juno turns back to him, still shuddering. There’s a fading red mark high on his cheek, a tightness to his face, but his hands are gentle and soft. Once Juno registers the steady rise and fall of his narrow chest beneath his torn and bloodied shirt, he can’t tear his eyes away. 

“Doesn’t matter,” he finishes, lamely. “Just a bad dream.” 

Peter looks at him with a new, strange sadness, moves like he means to say something but then thinks better of it, bringing Juno’s hand to his mouth and kissing the broken skin at his knuckles. 

The air catches in Juno’s chest, and he stays as still as he can manage. He can’t look away. He needs to look away. 

Behind him, the door creaks open, and heavy footfalls indicate the entrance of a new pair of silent, faceless armed guards. They’re all out of time, anyway. 

“Rise and shine,” Juno sighs, as Miasma’s assistants drag him to his feet. 

*

Juno shifts awake, and all around him the cell is silent and still. He’s lost time, somewhere between the cards and the place he finds himself now, Peter’s face pressed up against the back of his neck, still trembling faintly in his sleep, grasping at Juno’s waist like a lover. 

It’s hard, just then, thinking through the pain, trying to remember why he shouldn’t get to have that. 

His memories are vague, full of shadows and screams and things he only half remembers. They had to peel him out of the chair this time around. Drag him through the hallways and down the staircases past the carvings leering at him from every wall. Deposit him unceremoniously in the burial chamber he and Peter have called home for the duration of their visit, and slam the door shut so hard the echoes are still ringing in his head. 

And after that by-now-familiar routine, another. The memories are still hazy, floating vaguely behind his eyes and taking form in a catalogue of sensations. Fingers brushing over his temples, the wet rasp of a washcloth against his skin, the ghost of a cologne that faded to nothing days ago, the more familiar smell of sweat and blood and dust. A voice murmuring his name alongside a hundred other words, meaningless sounds that nevertheless soothed the constant pulsing of the Martian thing nesting in his skull.

Peter’s thoughts, always so close to his these days, slipping into his mind and out again at unpredictable intervals, like the established borders just can’t keep him out anymore. Like seeing the inside of his head is something that should come naturally to Juno. 

He’s silent now, unconsciousness drawing the buzzing of his thoughts deeper below the surface, where Juno would have to stretch and strain himself to reach for them. 

He won’t say he isn’t tempted to try. 

The day’s not too far off where bending and bending his mind as far as he can, and farther, again and again and again will finally break him for good. Maybe today. Maybe not until tomorrow. But it’s coming soon. Juno’s just about come to terms with that. Peter keeps murmuring encouragements to Juno about getting out, about surviving the impossible odds, about some grand escape that only needs to be planned, about taking Juno out past the furthest stars and showing him the galaxy, if he’ll only hold on a little longer. And Juno’s determined not to disappoint him. But he’s stubborn, not a superhuman. And if it comes down to that it may be all Juno can do to crack so spectacularly under the weight of it all that the reverberation stops whatever Miasma’s planning dead in its tracks. 

It fluctuates day to day, and sometimes Juno yearns with everything left in him to make it all stop, and other times he burns with guilt for just holding out as long as he can, for living and living and living when he’s only delaying the inevitable. The deciding factor, though….

Well. Predictably, it all comes down the man with his nose in the nape of Juno’s neck right now. Maybe Juno can’t hold out long enough to save himself, but he can goddamn keep it up for as long as it takes to get Peter out. 

_Sorry_ , he keeps whispering to Juno as he patches him up. Or maybe he’s only thinking it, Juno doesn’t have it in him to tell the difference. Apologies for the bad bargains he made that landed he and Juno here in the first place, for leading him straight to the casino, to the train, to the egg, never stopping to think about the danger.

One of Miasma’s assistants drove a knife into his hand, just a few hours ago. Pinned it to the tabletop when it looked like he wasn’t turning the cards over fast enough. Juno remembers the sound of his scream, half-swallowed and hidden behind clenched teeth. The way the imprint of Peter’s fear and pain lingered in his head after, like a spot left in his vision after staring too long into a bright light. 

The wound is wrapped in another strip of fabric from Peter’s shirt, that hand resting just over Juno’s hip. 

The breath rushes out of Juno in a rattling sigh, as he shuts his eyes against the eerie blue half-light. Tastes the first syllable of Peter’s name on his tongue, then shapes it silently, holding the sound of it in his mouth like a secret. Maybe gifts don’t accrue debt, but there’s something solid and aching in Juno’s chest that feels like owing him anyway. 

It would probably be easier, to owe Peter Nureyev. Some rationalization for the way Juno looks into those bright eyes and can’t stop himself from wanting to bring him the stars right out of the sky. If he had a single thing left in himself worth giving, he might just try it. 

“I’m getting you out,” he promises, barely a whisper. “No matter what it takes. You got that, Nureyev?”

The distant, sleepy murmur of his thoughts doesn’t shift for even a moment. But Juno almost feels better for having said it, anyway. 

Juno's more exhausted every day, and they're both sick of those fucking nutrient bars, and his head doesn't just hurt now, it's spinning. Takes longer every time to pick himself off the ground, longer for Nureyev’s hands to stop shaking and twitching and reaching for a deck of cards that isn’t there. But he knows what’s around the next corner, and he’s going to keep running until he reaches it, or runs himself into the ground. Whatever comes first. 

*

They can’t keep up the guise of maintaining the same closeness when one or both of them isn’t bloody or unconscious, and that’s the strange part to Juno. That in the light of what passes for day in a place without a sun, they’re only two near-strangers who happen to have shared...what? One investigation, while working at extremely cross purposes. One ill-advised heist. A card game, a narrow escape, a car chase, another narrow escape, a capture. A suite in a casino resort, and a burial chamber in a tomb. 

One kiss. But Juno’s kissed a lot of people. Mick Mercury, once. It doesn’t have to mean anything special. Nureyev’s probably had his fair share of kisses, too, Juno’s not looking to ask him about it. 

Juno’s not looking to learn a lot of stuff about Peter Nureyev. He knows just enough now to try and offer him a shot at escaping, any chance he can get. Just enough to get invested. He doesn’t want to discover anything that would make him second-guess that resolve. 

Hell, he knows he’s built up some kind of impossible fantasy around the man, by now, dreams about holding him close and feeling warm and safe and invincible like he’s never felt before. Stupid ideas about that heroic escape they keep on promising one another, that life of thrills and adventure they’re gonna live together once all of this is behind them, running hand in hand and never looking back. The kind of bullshit fantasies you feed yourself when you need a little lie to keep you alive. 

And if he can’t keep that up, what then? Peter Nureyev has to be someone he can trust, someone he can rely on and believe in and _lo--_

Well. Someone he can work well with. Someone worth dying for, if it comes down to that. 

Better to stick with the bullshit, and not ask too many questions, is the point. Better to trace the edges of Peter Nureyev, without trying to fill in the blanks. Better to let him be the kind of man Juno can sit beside while he chokes down another flavorless nutrient bar, watching the hieroglyphs dance in the swaying lamplight. Thinking idly about whether this is the last moment Juno will see him alive. Or this. Or this. 

*

Time continues to shift unsteadily as the days slide by. Moments of Peter lying on the cell floor, shivering, his head in Juno’s lap and his neck and shoulders marred with faint pink scars. Of Peter’s pain and fear and frustration flashing behind Juno’s eyes every time he blinks, the both of them thinking in tandem that time is running out. That the next time Juno can’t push himself far enough or Peter tries to take the fall for him Miasma will decide they just aren’t worth the trouble any longer. 

Because it feels endless, the cycle of flipping cards and reading them and bleeding and aching and screaming and flipping cards and reading them again, passing out and waking up and starting it all over from the beginning. It feels endless until it isn’t. 

Juno’s dying. Hell, Peter’s probably dying too. And it shows, in the way they wear down from test to test, getting slower and more sluggish and more strained with every card and every turn of Miasma’s dial. Juno can split his skull open and dive into Peter’s mind, or he can catch a full breath, but he can’t do both. There’s less and less left in them to give, and she’s asking for more. What they have just isn’t enough anymore. 

So she shows him the thing growing under his eye like a cancer, huge and pulsing and ancient and evil. And Juno’s no stranger to catching glimpses of awful inhuman things inside his head, but. It’s not a pretty sight. 

“Soon, I will have what I want,” she tells him, ice cold. “Then you will die.” 

And suddenly, there’s no next corner for Juno to turn down. The pattern’s broken down, and Juno can’t keep lying and living right up until he dies because the only thing left before him is a narrow stretch of road, and beyond that, looming out of the shifting red shadows, is the finish line.

**Author's Note:**

> im @wastrelwoods also on tumblr or twitter if you haven't had enough of me after this downer


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